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Timing test results - a poll

The lowest timing you can reliably pass

  • 100ms

  • 50ms

  • 20ms

  • 10ms

  • 5ms

  • 2ms

  • 1ms


Results are only viewable after voting.

Grooved

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Thanks for checking!

What were your clues? Extra hit? Tonality change? Something else?
Hi, tonality yes, but more like @amirm and @pkane said below about the ambience.
I think that after some answers, I was focusing on a feeling that one was going down and the other was going up
At lower delays, I was going by tonality and ambience created, not distinct clicks.
No, it was more tonality than timing, like Amir said. Almost like the difference between Oh and Ah sounds.
 

sq225917

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If you want to do it right make the files digitally, name them individually and play them randomly through a real music player app. Not through an Internet browser, you have no idea what the browser audio stack involves and such its a total shit show.
 

Nootmuskaatje

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It was really easy to hear it in the tone, not sure if this is a right test.
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Pdxwayne

Pdxwayne

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If you want to do it right make the files digitally, name them individually and play them randomly through a real music player app. Not through an Internet browser, you have no idea what the browser audio stack involves and such its a total shit show.
If you can create such files for us, that would be great.

So far, I have found that Chrome on Windows 10 very consistent in terms of clues I got with my listening chains.
 

captainbeefheart

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Strange that I can sense double clicks all the way to 1ms using smartphone.

I'm sorry I just don't believe this, and it sort of puts a stain on any other claims made. Like I said before, I have never seen trained musicians or recording engineers ever hear any delay even up to 10mS. Yes there is a audible change but it's not perceived as a "delay". Most of the time adding a short delay 50mS isn't even enough, 100mS most musicians and engineers hear a delay but 200mS is typical for a short delay effect up to 800mS for longer delays.

1mS is just too small to humanly hear as a "delay".
 
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Pdxwayne

Pdxwayne

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I'm sorry I just don't believe this, and it sort of puts a stain on any other claims made. Like I said before, I have never seen trained musicians or recording engineers ever hear any delay even up to 10mS. Yes there is a audible change but it's not perceived as a "delay". Most of the time adding a short delay 50mS isn't even enough, 100mS most musicians and engineers hear a delay but 200mS is typical for a short delay effect up to 800mS for longer delays.

1mS is just too small to humanly hear as a "delay".
Maybe that is not really a delay, but noise created by step response error, like you said in the "bait and switch" thread?

Other than that, I can't really prove to you what I hear inside my head, unfortunately....
 

Jimbob54

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I'm sorry I just don't believe this, and it sort of puts a stain on any other claims made. Like I said before, I have never seen trained musicians or recording engineers ever hear any delay even up to 10mS. Yes there is a audible change but it's not perceived as a "delay". Most of the time adding a short delay 50mS isn't even enough, 100mS most musicians and engineers hear a delay but 200mS is typical for a short delay effect up to 800mS for longer delays.

1mS is just too small to humanly hear as a "delay".
The test creates "tells" (apparently, I can't do better than guessing under 5ms). Wayne detects the tells the test creates. But some chains create different tells and seemingly some not at all. This is what causes his consternation.
 

captainbeefheart

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This poll needs some clarification.

Are you supposed to vote on hearing ANY audible difference?

Or are we voting on when we actually hear an audible "delay", one sound followed in time by the same sound?

Far too many people are hearing 1mS which is pretty difficult to hear any change and impossible to hear an actual delay.
 

captainbeefheart

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The test creates "tells" (apparently, I can't do better than guessing under 5ms). Wayne detects the tells the test creates. But some chains create different tells and seemingly some not at all. This is what causes his consternation.

Great description, "tells", I like that.

So we are just trying to hear any difference and not necessarily a delay? The "tells" are what we are listening for then, I get it thanks.
 
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Pdxwayne

Pdxwayne

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This poll needs some clarification.

Are you supposed to vote on hearing ANY audible difference?

Or are we voting on when we actually hear an audible "delay", one sound followed in time by the same sound?

Far too many people are hearing 1mS which is pretty difficult to hear any change and impossible to hear an actual delay.
I started thinking actually hearing a delay is required, but I think it turned into "any" change is still good, as long as one passes the blind tests. I am fine with that.

; )
 

captainbeefheart

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Maybe that is not really a delay, but noise created by step response error, like you said in the "bait and switch" thread?

Ok that makes sense, so we are listening for any "tell" that differentiates it from the sync track that doesn't necessarily have to be a "delay"?
 
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Pdxwayne

Pdxwayne

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Ok that makes sense, so we are listening for any "tell" that differentiates it from the sync track that doesn't necessarily have to be a "delay"?
Yup!

Please don't feel bad if you don't sense any different for 5ms and down. Not everyone sensed it. Also, it is very chain dependent.
 

captainbeefheart

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Yup!

Please don't feel bad if you don't sense any different for 5ms and down. Not everyone sensed it. Also, it is very chain dependent.

I can sense some slight change below 5mS but I don't perceive it as a delay, the total time of both signals (hi-hat & kick drum) when delayed has increased.

What I take away from a scientific point of view is that these are two significantly different "sounds". When timing them together differently of course there is going to be a sound change, the larger the difference in time the larger the difference in sound. I believe they do this to make it easier for people to differentiate the two separate sounds. A test with the same signal source would better I think, copy and paste the hi-hat as two separate tracks and time them differently against one another so you don't have as much intermodulation of varying frequencies, bass frequencies with fast rise times and treble frequencies with fast rise times combining is what you get with the original test. The fundamental frequencies and all the timbre or harmonics of each instrument will sum differently depending on time and so sound different.
 

levimax

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Just using my computer monitors speakers I found the test pretty easy, especially @ 1 ms which to me had more difference than 5 ms or 2 ms? Is it possible crappy speakers make this easier? This test doesn't seem right to me.
 

captainbeefheart

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Just using my computer monitors speakers I found the test pretty easy, especially @ 1 ms which to me had more difference than 5 ms or 2 ms? Is it possible crappy speakers make this easier? This test doesn't seem right to me.

That's what I don't like about the test. The more I think about it each "sample" in time, the sum of the two signals will be different. For example at 2mS a snapshot in time may reveal the summing of all the fundamental and harmonics is higher in distortion vs the same snapshot in time taken with a 5mS delay.

For each delay test given any particular snapshot in time will have different summing of all frequencies/harmonics.
 

Aerith Gainsborough

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I passed the 1ms test with a lot of concentration since one of them sounds ever so slightly higher pitched.

I don't classify it as reliable though, as the tiniest distraction would be enough to whack the test.

Reliable, as in "very easy to hear" is 5ms and above.

Setup below: Focal Clear, normal listening volume.

Like I said before, I have never seen trained musicians or recording engineers ever hear any delay even up to 10mS. Yes there is a audible change but it's not perceived as a "delay".
Erm.. sorry but 10ms is extremely obvious in this case. Oo
Even 5ms are noticeably two distinct events.

Now, would I be able to hear that when not knowing what to listen for? Probably not at 5ms and below.
10ms? Definitely, if it's isolated such as this. In the midst of "noisy" music? I doubt it.
 
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captainbeefheart

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I passed the 1ms test with a lot of concentration since one of them sounds ever so slightly higher pitched.

I don't classify it as reliable though, as the tiniest distraction would be enough to whack the test.

Reliable, as in "very easy to hear" is 5ms and above.

Setup below: Focal Clear, normal listening volume.


Erm.. sorry but 10ms is extremely obvious in this case. Oo
Even 5ms are noticeably two distinct events.

Now, would I be able to hear that when not knowing what to listen for? Probably not at 5ms and below.
10ms? Definitely, if it's isolated such as this. In the midst of "noisy" music? I doubt it.

I'm saying when someone asks "I want a short delay added" I would give them many options, my point is when I've gone as low as 10mS they look at me like I have two heads when I say I added a "delay". I'm not saying if I asked them to sit down and concentrate to hear a difference between the original signal and the delayed signal they wouldn't be able to do so. They don't accept it as a "delay" until it gets up near 100mS and above. In that time domain is where it's an acceptable level of "delay" effect. When asked to richen up a signal I'll often add a very short delay, like 10mS and yes it's audible but the artists don't consider it a delay. So non-professional sound engineers (musicians) has essentially empirically defined for us where a "delay' begins and where the effect of a small time delay begins to be defined as a different style of effect.
 

RayDunzl

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Far too many people are hearing 1mS which is pretty difficult to hear any change and impossible to hear an actual delay.

I hear 1ms delay in a channel vs the other channel as a change in the phantom location of the sound - like a stereo pan.

Not two separate sounds, which occurs with much more delay, maybe 20~30ms, which I can't try right now.
 
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captainbeefheart

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I hear 1ms delay in a channel vs the other channel as a change in the phantom location of the sound - like a stereo pan.

Not two separate sounds, which occurs with much more delay, maybe 20~30ms, which I can't try right now.

That's all I'm saying, it takes quite a bit of time difference to hear two distinct separate sounds one after the other.
 
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